Ford Thaxton's internet page with film soundtrack scores at
http://www.film.com/reviews/features/stc/ was playing the scores
from films about Pearl Harbor. It occured to me that in the 1950s
the big film about Pearl Harbor was FROM HERE TO ETERNITY. In the
1960s the major films about Pearl Harbor became a little more
explicit with DAY OF INFAMY and TORA! TORA! TORA!. In the meantime
the event has receded in the past and American education has
lowered its standards a little. The upcoming film about the battle
will be PEARL HARBOR. I expect the next major film to be called
WWII: PEARL HARBOR and the one after that to be called THE JAPANESE
SURPRISE ATTACK AT PEARL HARBOR. [-mrl]

STRANGE AEONS, a British horror fanzine, has been publishing a
few of my horror film reviews (e.g., THE NINTH GATE). The magazine
is dedicated to horror, but especially to Lovecraftian horror.
They don't seem to be into the slasher or fishhook sort of horror
that seems to be so popular now. They are not into the HOLLOW MAN
and WHAT LIES BENEATH sort of horror film that ends up with the
unkillable stalker. They are into the quiet horrors that are the
sort of thing that H. P. Lovecraft would write. They send me a
copy of each issue that has one of my reviews and frankly, I am
enjoying them more than I expected. I was never that much of a
Lovecraft fan. But I am getting there now. Part of what held me
back, for at least some of the time, was the knowledge that
Lovecraft was an anti-Semite, if an odd one. When he would rant
against the Jews his wife would try to stop him, reminding him,
"But I am Jewish." "No you're not. You are Mrs. Lovecraft." I
suppose if I can get over that objection to Richard Wagner, I can
do the same for Lovecraft.

I guess the truth is that I am not becoming so much just a fan of
Lovecraft as of the breed of fantasy that flourished in the 1930s
and then died again. Indeed there were some very good writers at
that time and most have been forgotten. Some remained popular to
later years, people like Ray Bradbury and, of course, Edgar Rice
Burroughs. And some were revived later and to remain popular.
That is writers like Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan and H.
P. Lovecraft. Some get revived fitfully, but today are for the
most part on their way to being forgotten. A. Merritt was great at
creating strange alternate unnatural histories of the world with
weird natural gods with names like "Snake Mother" and "the Metal
Emperor." If I remember rightly, a close friend of Lovecraft was
the American Coleridge, the poet and fantasist Clark Ashton Smith-
-ignored because of where his writing was published, not for any
lack of brilliance. These writers maybe did not all flourish in
the 30s, but they published in the pulps. That was really the
Golden Age of pulp writing. Some pulp writing was not great, but
some was as good as any writing that was being done. But it was
totally ignored by the academics as coming from the wrong side of
the tracks. Since the 1960s science fiction writing has gone from
the lower class of academic respectability, just a bit above
pornography, to the middle class. But as that has happened much of
the best has been forgotten. Lovecraft might have been forgotten,
not much respected in his own time in his own country. As with
Edgar Allan Poe, what called him to Americans' attention was that
he was discovered and became respected by Europeans. So perhaps a
British fanzine of Lovecraftian horror, much set in Massachusetts
or Rhode Island, is not so strange.

Lovecraft's is not the best writing of the 1930s, but it is usually
quite worth reading. Lovecraft combines much of Smith's poetic
style--as seen through a morbid lens--with some of the bizarre
imaginative mythologies that could have been created by A. Merritt.
He wrote fifty-some stories, about a quarter of which share the
Cthulu premise. This is a sort of alternate mythology that turns
his horror stories into science fiction. In times long before we
measure life on Earth, we were occupied by immortal aliens, huge
and so horrible that merely to see what their shadows looked like
would send us screaming mad. These creatures were banished from
the Earth but to someplace somehow very near. They want to return
and offer mortals some incredible power in return for opening the
doorways. This is a horror for the 1930s in a way that even the
popular Universal horror films were not. In the 1930s the memories
were fresh of the horrors of the Great War. In part these horrors
inspired the 1930s horror films. But the Frankenstein Monster or a
werewolf or Dracula could be only so frightening. If one of these
monsters killed maybe two or three people a night, that was about
the most. During the war one man in a trench with a machine gun
could kill that many soldiers in a few seconds. What threat was
Dracula compared to the Spanish Influenza virus that killed
30,000,000 people? But if the Great Old Ones return, they take
their world back. There will be no human survivors. There was the
possibility that science might find a natural explanation for
Dracula and werewolves. But the Great Old Ones were from nature
and the world of science. Other writers have picked up the Cthulu
premise to write more stories in the shared world. These stories
have come to be called the Cthulu Mythos, though Lovecraft himself
never used that terminology.

It has been suggested by Lin Carter that in fact H. P. Lovecraft
was a better horror writer than Poe. I do not think I accept that
myself. Both authors were masters of mood, though I think that Poe
was better at varying moods and styles. Lovecraft to often fell
back on nameless dread as clues keep coming together and then the
payoff is some idea that is morbid and moderately creative. I
think that Poe could paint more hues of dread but then his payoffs
were less varied and imaginative than Lovecraft's. [-mrl]

SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE
(a film review in bullet form by Mark R. Leeper from the Toronto International Film Festival):

Capsule: Basically a one-joke black comedy, but
one beautifully realized. What if the elusive
Max Schreck (who played the vampire in the
silent version of Dracula, NOSFERATU) really
was a vampire. This is a sumptuous recreation
of Eastern Europe in the 1920s and of the film
director F. W. Murnau. Standout performance by
Willem Dafoe. Well acted and well filmed.
Rating: high +2

Inspired by Murnau making the 1921 NOSFERATU with Max Schreck

Autocratic Murnau wants to film DRACULA even without the
rights (he changes character names and minor details). His
crew works with minimum of information even what they will
have to do

Czechoslovakia (not Transylvania) is home of Count Orlock

Crew goes to film in Czechoslovakia, mysterious Max Schreck
will meet them there

Only Murnau knows that Schreck is really a vampire

Schreck gets minor members of the film crew when Murnau no
longer needs them

Stylishly filmed

Faces and bats in beautiful Templar illustrations under
credits

Loving photography of train engine Charon

Schreck in original had finger extenders for long thin
fingers, Dafoe just has long fingernails

Pieces of original film

Image of white vampire head against dark

Swastika scratched on wall

Use of black and white and original footage

Templar book for credits

"The audience gives life, the camera takes life." Quote from
actor.

Autocratic director, willing to give up script girl to vampire

Schreck has interesting insights into book DRACULA

Trip to site of filming parallels book and film.
Superstitious peasants, weird topography

One joke film, but well done

Delivers exactly what expected

First third excellent, second third is very good, last third
is okay

Script by Steve Katz

Most of what was good was in trailer

Camera error: Does cast a reflection

Murnau talks as he shoots like a novelist

Great performance by Willem Dafoe

Malkovich always gives a very good performance but for once he
cannot compete with Dafoe's performance

Humorous by performance by Izzy Izzard

Udo Kier, more as in-joke, no an important role

Cary Elwes just okay but does his

Error: Camera cranking had to be very, very regular the whole
circle, not like it is done here.

Error: We see a little of Dafoe's reflection in mirror

Fact: Max Schreck was in something like forty films after
having played on the stage. In German domestic market films
up to his death in 1936. NOSFERATU was one of his first and
is by far his best remembered, but he is a long way from being
a mystery man. Schreck is the German word for "terror," which
added to the latter-day folk-legends

Capsule: Tom Hanks plays a FedEx executive
marooned on a deserted island who must find the
means to stay alive and sane. Much of the film
is enthralling but director Robert Zemeckis
spends too much time on the aspects of lessor
interest and not enough time on the parts that
are really most enthralling. The film builds
to a platitude by rushing past some of the most
intellectually engaging material. With more
emphasis on the real meat, this film would have
rated considerably higher. Rating: 6 (0 to
10), high +1 (-4 to +4)

Chuck Noland (played by the versatile Tom Hanks) is a very
dedicated executive for Federal Express, the package delivery
company. He is extremely systematic and obsessed with the passage
of time. Chuck has become a local legend for his dedication to
delivering packages on time. He is even the center of a Federal
Express urban myth about the lengths he will go to get a package
delivered on time. Chuck knows that in his business time is all
important for him, but unknown to him, he is about to spend the
next few years of his life in a place where time is far more
subjective.

Chuck is napping on a company flight over the Pacific and awakes to
discover that the plane is off course in a storm and desperately
trying to find its way back. Suddenly the world falls apart under
him and we find ourselves in a crashing plane that is rapidly
decompressing. After what well might be the scariest plane crash
in cinema history Chuck finds himself in a life raft in a storm
alone on a hostile ocean. With extreme good fortune he is blown to
an island. But perhaps the island is not such good luck as he has
no tools and no means to feed and protect himself. How he does
that is the heart of the film. Unfortunately, there is not enough
of this heart.

The problem is that the buildup to this point really takes too much
time. The script shows you a bit of his relationship with his
lover Kelly Frears (played by Helen Hunt). But once he is on the
island that part of the film really is necessary only to establish
that he has a woman whom he dearly loves. Developing that
relationship takes valuable time from coverage of the island
experience. The opening setup is not only unneeded, it is also
puzzling. We are taken to a large family Christmas dinner at which
everyone in the family seems to dress the same and work for Federal
Express. That strikes the viewer as peculiar, but it leads to
nothing. It not only wastes precious screentime, it does nothing
to enhance the story. What it does serve to do is give Federal
Express an even larger product placement than the huge one they
would already have.

The centerpiece of this film is the air crash which is as detailed
as it is frightening. One might almost say it was done in the
realistic style of the beach landing of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and may
be nearly as harrowing. It packs quite an impact and I will
certainly think of its images the next time that I fly. Trust me,
you should not expect to see this film as an airline in-flight
movie.

This in many ways is an engineer's film. With a set of modest
tools washed up on the shore from the crash or available on the
island he is forced to reinvent or discover ways to fulfill his
needs. He must reinterpret objects from a few floating FedEx
packages as the tools to build his small world. And the knowledge
of how to do that does not come easily. In the beginning he is
almost a laughable character, strange-looking and overweight, and
he makes foolish and frustrating mistakes. And he pays for those
mistakes in pain and blood. What seem like very small tasks in
civilization become extremely hard.

As time goes by, Chuck's intelligence as well as his fitness seems
to improve immensely, though not his sanity. I think that the most
interesting point made by the film is that sanity may be really a
social affectation. Many people let down their guard when they are
alone and do things like talking to themselves that they would not
do in front of others. Chuck's circumstances are more extreme and
he goes a lot further. To save the greater part of his reason must
sacrifice the lessor part. Chuck allows his sanity fall away and
to be replaced by a benign and natural insanity. He invents a
friend to talk with. In order to battle the solitude he even comes
to love the friend. But he can only do this because he is alone.
If he knew anyone was watching him he would be inhibited from
creating such a friend. Yet his actions seem natural. Perhaps we
are all at least partly insane and keep that part in check while
there is danger that other people may find out. And those others
also keep their irrational sides hidden. While this phenomenon is
usually interpreted as the solitude driving him insane, it seems
really to be a process of the privacy allowing him to drop his
guard. He allows himself to be natural in ways that few other
people in the world can.

This is a better story than the platitude that it seems to build up
to in the final scene. But it was not all the film it could have
been if Zemeckis would have realized where his best material lay.
It rates a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +1 on the -4 to +4
scale. Wouldn't this be a good time for Luis Bunuel's 1952
ROBINSON CRUSOE to show up again and be rediscovered? I haven't
seen it since I was five years old, but by all accounts it was
quite good. Extra: look in this film for an emotionally charged
scene that seems to be borrowed from MISSION TO MARS. [-mrl]

Capsule: More enjoyable as a simple exercise in
Grand Guignol than for the unoriginal theme,
this is a rather cliched story of a rebel
blamed for society's ills when it is really the
establishment itself which is at fault. A good
cast pits Geoffrey Rush against Michael Caine.
But the film is more for fans of Jimmy Sangster
than for those of Robert Bolt. Rating: 7 (0 to
10), low +2 (-4 to +4)

This year there were two films about the infamous Marquis de Sade
and his imprisonment at the mental asylum at Charenton. There was
Benoit Jacquot's more reserved SADE and Philip Kaufman's QUILLS.
Both tell the same oft-repeated story as such diverse films as
GREAT BALLS OF FIRE and THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT. Each of these
films tells the account of somebody notorious in his own time.
But, we are told, the REAL evil was that of the establishment that
tried to suppress and crush these free spirits. The world has come
to tolerate what the outcast was doing and the real villain was not
the free spirit but the world that wanted to suppress him. There
probably are few other ways to tell the narrative of someone
punished for free expression from the viewpoint of a world that now
tolerates free expression. It would be hard to tell the story of
the Marquis de Sade at Charenton any other way in a world that now
tolerates Gangsta Rap that is just a violent. Though Peter Brook's
1966 MARAT/SADE is a film that escapes the cliched just about as
well as it could be done.

It is the early 1800s and Napoleon is Emperor of France. The
infamous Marquis de Sade (Geoffrey Rush) has seen the excesses of
the Revolution and the Terror that followed. He has incorporated
that horror in his "sadistic" writings. Now he lives imprisoned
but in luxury at the Asylum at Charenton under the sympathetic but
ineffective care of the Abbe Coulmier (Joaquin Phoenix). All he
needs to engage his bizarre fantasies is paper, ink, and quills.
Coulmier uses argument and what he sees as reason to try to reform
his patient and bring him to God. Coulmier argues for restraint
and virtue; De Sade is the prophet of unrestrained hedonism and
fulfillment. Sade's therapy also involves his staging of innocuous
plays with the inmates as actors. Naturally he subverts these
plays in any ways possible.

But Sade is an angry spirit who vents his furies by continuing to
write his lurid and explicit sexual fantasies. For him writing his
fantasies is an irresistible compulsion. His laundress Madeleine
(Kate Winslet) manages a tidy business smuggling his fiction to a
courier who takes it in turn to be published. The stories sell and
are enjoyed all over France and the Emperor Napoleon wants to see
this affront to public decency squelched. He sends an alienist Dr.
Royer-Collard (Michael Caine) to Charenton. (Alienists were the
forerunners of psychiatrists like alchemists were the forerunners
of chemists.) Royer-Collard obtains real results by torturing
patients nearly to death and forcing them to give up their
insanity. Royer-Collard is a respected man and recently has taken
as a bride the reluctant Simone (Amelia Warner) who is about a
third his age.

The screen has yet to provide a really hypnotic and effective de
Sade. Such diverse talents as Kier Dullea, Klaus Kinski, Patrick
Magee, Daniel Auteuil and the great Conrad Veidt have played the
man, but it was (with the possible exception of Veidt) never played
by someone who combines the whimsy and malignancy that the role
requires. Rush has some power in the role, but even he falls
short. Michael Caine represents a much more urbane and
administrative evil and does a sufficient job but seemingly without
his heart being in it. Kate Winslet of TITANIC fame plays the
laundress transfixed by the notorious author. Joaquin Phoenix as a
benightedly idealistic cleric is also acceptable but uninspired.

Sadly the theme of this story is over-familiar and tired from
over-use. Where this film stands out is its ghoulish Grand Guignol
vision of the tortures of the asylum and its enjoyably unpleasant
anti-establishment view of the early 19th century. And perhaps in
that de Sade would have appreciated it. I rate QUILLS a 7 on the 0
to 10 scale and a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale. There were two
additional treats for me. And it is a pleasure to see seasoned
character actor Billie Whitelaw playing as the laundress's blind
mother. Also being in the telecommunications industry myself, I
enjoyed seeing the early telecommunications fiasco. [-mrl]